The president of Catholics for the Common Good says the practice of creating children from sperm and egg donors has consequences and is an injustice to the child.

CARL BUNDERSON/CNA/EWTN NEWS

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A California bill ensuring that health-care coverage for infertility treatments would be provided to same-sex couples is a violation of the basic human right for a mother and a father, critics charge.

“What we’re concerned about is sperm and egg donation in general, for the purpose of creating children,” Bill May, president of Catholics for the Common Good, told Catholic News Agency April 30.

He said the practice deprives these children of “knowing and being cared for by their mother or father or both. It’s a violation of a fundamental human right, and it needs to be stopped.”

Health-insurance policies in the state must already offer coverage for infertility treatment, except for in vitro fertilization. The bill will mandate that insurance plans for infertility cover same-sex couples and the elderly.

California statute determines infertility either by a condition recognized by a physician as a cause of infertility or by “the inability to conceive a pregnancy or to carry a pregnancy to a live birth after a year or more of regular sexual relations without contraception.”

Because California considers any inability to conceive after a year of “regular sexual relations” to be “infertility,” no medical diagnosis is needed.

The bill has a hearing in the Committee on Health of the California State Assembly, the lower house of the legislature, on April 30. If passed, it will go to the Assembly floor and then to the Senate. The measure was authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a Democratic representative from San Francisco.

Ammiano introduced the bill because “insurance companies are not complying with current state law that prohibits patients from being treated differently based on sex, marital status and sexual orientation and current law that requires registered domestic partners to be treated as spouses in regard to fertility treatments,” according to a fact sheet from the California Legislature.

Ammiano calls it discrimination that same-sex couples, even when the partners are physiologically fertile, not receive infertility coverage “based on not having an opposite sex married partner with whom to have one year of regular sexual relations.”

Carlos Alcalá, a spokesman for Ammiano, told The Weekly Standard that, under the bill, “if a plan covers egg donation costs for a heterosexual couple unable to conceive without it, it would have to cover those costs for a gay male couple as well.”

The Capitol Resource Institute opposes the bill, claiming it would violate the freedom of religion, conscience and thought of “many medical professionals and employers.”

Existing legislation, which the bill does not meaningfully alter, ensures that employers and insurers who are or are owned by religious organizations would not have to offer forms of infertility treatment “in a manner inconsistent with the religious organization’s religious and ethical principles.”

May emphasized that the bill will contribute to the conception of children who are alienated from their biological parents and that every child has a right to know and be cared for by his parents.

“This practice turns children into commodities, into objects for the fulfillment of adults,” he said.

“This practice, of creating children from sperm and egg donors, has consequences. It’s an injustice to the child, depriving them of a fundamental human right.”

Mark,
The tragic circumstances I referred to in cases of adoption occur before the child is adopted, not after. In an ideal world, there would be no adoptions, because there would be no children to adopt. The problem with permitting same-sex couple adoption is that it threatens to make tragic circumstances just as desirable as the ideal.

Adults who were raised by a same-sex couple are so rare in our society that it’s practically impossible to get them to show up in a random cross-section of Americans in statistically significant numbers. So the best we can say about outcomes for such folks is that we don’t know.

Posted by Mark Luxford on Thursday, May, 2, 2013 2:21 PM (EST):

Kevin Rahe, what are the “tragic circumstances” you believe will happen to children adopted by gay or lesbian parents, or who come into existence due to the use of IVF? Social science research has proven that children in families headed by same-sex parents are not more likely than their peers in traditional families to experience emotional, behavioral or psychosocial problems as they grow; nor are they more likely to be gay or lesbian themselves. The sexual orientation of the parents has no impact on the development of the children. What is important, what does have an impact, is the quality of the parent/child relationship. That is true of same-sex headed families and heterosexual headed families alike.

Posted by Jennifer on Thursday, May, 2, 2013 10:40 AM (EST):

@Ann: I was very surprised to hear you refer to children as commodities, which would equate them to oil, gas, silver and gold. Catholic teaching reminds us that children are gifts from God, we do not have a “right” to a child.

Posted by Kevin Rahe on Thursday, May, 2, 2013 10:38 AM (EST):

Trebert,

A child has a right to be raised by his or her real parents. If that’s not possible, then we owe the child as close to a reasonable substitute as possible. Another man and woman is certainly that, but two people of the same sex? At the very least, permitting adoption by same-sex couples raises questions about it being more about finding a child for the couple than finding parents for the child. Not only that, but if each partner claims to be an equal “parent” of the child, then it involuntarily inserts the child into a paradox - a family structure that could never actually exist by normal human means.

That said, I could imagine a situation where a same-sex couple takes in a homeless child that no one else is willing to care for - say in a region with no safety net of orphanages or adoption agencies - and raises him or her, presenting themselves to the child as merely friends, keeping the intimate nature of their relationship a secret, and avoiding indoctrinating the child into thinking that relationships like theirs should be publicly approved. In fact, I would consider such an act to be heroic on their part.

Posted by Jennifer on Thursday, May, 2, 2013 9:16 AM (EST):

We have to pray with both hands for this lost Assemblyman, and for an immediate and absolute end to the culture of death. Thank you NC Register for the article

Posted by Ann on Wednesday, May, 1, 2013 11:50 PM (EST):

Children become commodities in matters of divorce and adoption. Basic rights are rights for everyone, not just a particular few. I’m glad CA has the foresight into a benefit for all people in their state, and it should be the same in the US.

Posted by Susan Kiernan on Wednesday, May, 1, 2013 7:07 PM (EST):

What will happen if the demand for donor eggs and sperm exceeds the supply? Will the government demand that people donate? The way things have been going, it doesn’t sound that implausible although a few years ago it would have sounded crazy.

Posted by Trebert on Wednesday, May, 1, 2013 3:03 PM (EST):

Kevin,

Re permitting same-sex couples to adopt . . .

Exactly how does a committed same-sex couple willing and able to love/ care for an orphaned child possibly violate a basic human right? Scripture tells us that by not caring for orphans is itself a direct violation of a basic human right - “do not deprive foreigners and orphans of their rights” Deut. 24:17

And, if that were not enough consider the following ‘What God the Father considers to be pure and genuine religion is this: to take care of orphans and widows in their suffering and to keep oneself from being corrupted by the world.” James 1:27

Posted by Kevin Rahe on Wednesday, May, 1, 2013 10:20 AM (EST):

It is a tragedy when a child’s real parents are unable or unwilling to raise him or her. Adoption is primarily about finding parents for a child, not the other way around. And while in vitro fertilization entails its own moral dilemmas, at least a man and woman who use the procedure can claim that it augments or replaces a natural process that should work but isn’t for some reason. A same-sex couple cannot make that claim.

Policies like the one described in the article as well as others permitting same-sex couples to adopt turn all these principles on their head and threaten to make tragic circumstances just as desirable as the ideal. We do this at our peril.

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